


say goodbye to my heart tonight

by TheBookDinosaur



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Outdated References, high dumbassery all round, outrageous roleplaying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:55:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23607919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBookDinosaur/pseuds/TheBookDinosaur
Summary: Lily Evans has a rule: don't fuck the same person twice. James Potter has a rebuttal: shoddy disguises don't count as the same people, do they?
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 14
Kudos: 82





	say goodbye to my heart tonight

**Author's Note:**

> title from the neon trees song animal

[ ](https://imgur.com/4ll9wZH)

Lily’s night has been pretty fucking great so far, pun entirely intended. She’s breathtakingly close to ending it on a high note – turned over onto her stomach, face buried in her one night stand’s remarkably comfortable shoulder, blissfully ready to drift off to sleep – when there’s a loud, unholy noise directly underneath her. She blinks. James is laughing.

She waits patiently for him to stop, and against all good manners and sense he does not. His quiet chuckles might even have been endearing if they weren’t reverberating directly underneath her head.

“Oh my God,” she says finally, hauling herself into something approximating uprightness. “ _What_ is it?”

James’ cackles finally die a long-overdue death. “Sorry,” he says, which does not do much to placate Lily when it is delivered in a voice that is truly, unreasonably mirthful for the middle of the night. “I like your corkboard.”

“My _what_?”

“Your Post-It, specifically,” James says, sliding out from under her. The long stretch of his back as he leans out of bed is startlingly distracting; Lily barely notices what he’s reaching for. In all honesty she’d forgotten she even had a corkboard – she’d bought it secondhand on an ultimately doomed productivity kick and ended up populating it with all the useless pamphlets and couches people kept giving her when she went outside. Maybe one day she would spend £30 at Poundland and qualify for a free set of crayons, who knew.

Buried amongst all the shite, though – it comes rushing back suddenly. The memory of a neon-green Post-It after her last disastrous attempt at a friends with benefits arrangement. And sure enough, that’s exactly what James grabs, his arm unerring.

“Oh my God,” Lily says. She doesn’t need to see the Post-It to know exactly what it says, but James presents it to her anyway: RULE ONE, it screeches out at her in capitals and red pen, DON’T FUCK THE SAME GUY TWICE. It’s underlined three times, it’s circled, it’s got about six exclamation points squeezed into the tiny space.

“Work of art, really,” James says.

“ _Shut_ up,” Lily says, snatching the note away from him. Her only excuse for what is admittedly an aesthetic travesty is that she’d been fairly drunk and maybe weeping when she’d written it, but she’s not about to admit any of that to this guy.

“Listen, I hate to break it to you,” James says, “but I’m pretty sure you’ve broken your own rule. We’ve definitely fucked more than once, even by the most conventional standards.”

Lily, who is nothing if not a pedant at heart, says, “Oh shit, you’re right,” before she can stop herself.

“I try to make a habit of it,” James says modestly.

“Shut up, I need to rephrase this.” Lily twists around in search of a red pen and another Post-It note. “One night stands only?”

“I’d be down.”

“I hope you mean up,” Lily mutters, accidentally putting her hand in a glass of water. “Shit. Never mind, it doesn’t matter, you know that’s not what I mean. One night stands only with different people?”

“Bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?”

“Distinct one night stands only,” Lily tries. James makes a hmming noise that’s the closest he’s come to agreement.

“Do you have other rules?” he asks, as Lily debates whether it’s worth getting out of bed to find a pen.

“What?”

“If that’s Rule One, I mean.”

“No,” Lily says, and then immediately contradicts herself. “Yes. Rule Two is that mouthy arseholes who can’t keep their mouths shut get tossed out on their ears.”

“Harsh,” James says, slithering downwards in Lily’s bed and blinking up at her, like if he makes himself comfortable enough she won’t find it in her heart to eject him. Then he tests the theory with, “You weren’t complaining about my mouth ten minutes ago.”

The third drawer in her bedside table has a stray highlighter in it, so she gives up the search for a pen and just slashes an asterisk over the whole Post-It and across some of her palm, unintentionally. She’ll get to it in the morning. When she turns back around James is still looking at her, so she says, “Your mouth wasn’t doing any _talking_ ten minutes ago.”

“ _Ouch_ ,” James says, laughing again, and then he reels her into another round of making out and both paper and highlighter fall to the floor, temporarily forgotten.

~*~

Honestly, Lily thinks it stays forgotten for a solid two weeks. James had been a perfectly friendly presence in the morning, continuing his legacy of inappropriate cheerfulness from the previous night; he’d also managed to coax an unexpectedly excellent orgasm out of her for the horrendous hour, given that Lily was usually a nonfunctional pile of grumbles until about lunchtime and had been known to kick people out when they tried and failed to initiate morning-after sex. She’d cooked breakfast in return, feeling bacon to be rather generous reparation but feeling, herself, rather generous; James had mostly rattled around her flat making pithy comments about the state of her bookshelves that’d be more annoying if he hadn’t earned the right to poke fun by having tripped over a stray pile of books the night before, and ultimately he’d fucked off with a grin. She fully expects never to see him again. And, well, she can’t deny the twinge of disappointment that comes with the thought, but given how historically, demonstrably terrible she is at keeping emotions out of a friends with benefits arrangement it’s probably for the best.

Naturally, just as she’s resigned herself to this she runs into him two weeks later. Inside a new bar, to boot, though she can’t bring herself to disapprove of that – it’s just around the corner from her flat, she’s pretty sure it’s her civic duty to pay them a visit even if they are named The Banana Grave. No, the worst thing is that he’s sitting on the counter chatting with the bartender, which means she has a split second of advantage – a tiny opportunity where she could have ducked out without his being any the wiser. Instead she lets the sign above the bar promising £5.50 cocktails until midnight tempt her for just a second too long, and then James turns around and sees her.

“Lily!”

“Hi!” Lily says, trying to match his enthusiasm and probably coming off deranged for it. The bartender raises his eyebrows at her, and she scowls at him for a second before remembering that he’s going to be making her drinks and mostly smoothing out her expression. Mostly.

“What’ll you have?” he asks, in an accent that has her very surprised he’s behind a bar.

“G and T, please,” she says carefully, watching him maybe more closely than is warranted, except he sounds like he ought to be wandering around shooting at a bird of the avian disposition and she’s not sure she trusts him to make a drink.

“How’ve you been doing?” James asks while the bartender swans off, and the kicker is that he actually sounds interested. Who stays interested in a one night stand a week later, honestly, she thinks, and conveniently ignores the fact that she’s now considering asking how he’s been doing.

“Fine,” Lily says, and tells herself that she isn’t moving because she still needs to collect her drink. And then she gets her drink, and still doesn’t move away, which is probably some kind of mistake but it’s not one she can bring herself to try and correct. “What about you?”

“Short answer or long?”

Lily takes a sip as she considers this. It’s very good, which is vaguely annoying; now she’ll want to come back. James watches her with a half-grin on his face that is at least as annoying as the drink but also, simultaneously, twice as attractive. Fuck it, Lily decides. “Long.” James grins and slithers down to sit next to her.

If anyone had told Lily at any point during the past week – or, indeed, at any point in her life up to now – that she’d willingly spend most of tonight sitting on a stool with no back support being regaled by an ex-one night stand with the story of how his friend’s bar had opened, she probably would have checked for head injury or laughed them out of the room, depending on how charitable she was feeling. As it turns out, though, she forgets remarkably quickly that James has seen her without any clothes on – he’s a good storyteller, to give credit where it’s due. Then again, Lily’s pretty sure it would be actively difficult to make a tale boring if it involves – as this one does – an old family, a vast inheritance, musical theatre, a Staffordshire bull terrier, and an explanation for why her bartender sounds like such a toff. So perhaps James only skews closer to ‘not awful’ as storytellers go. 

“Where do you fit into this?” she asks, because so far all she’s heard about is Sirius, who is currently at the other side of the bar trying to make tossing a single bottle into the air directly in front of him more impressive than it is, and it feels a little awkward to ask questions about someone else’s story.

“Oh, I’m the best mate,” James says easily. “The one whose couch he slept on for a bit. Did I not mention that?”

“No,” Lily says, suppressing laughter, and then she gives up and starts laughing into her free hand, because it’s very funny that James had been so focused on telling his friend’s story that he’d essentially erased himself from it entirely. Also, possibly, because she’s had a few more drinks by this point and Sirius is making them strong, in between random quick questions about Lily’s drinking preferences.

“Alright,” she says, turning her head to look back up at James, whose gaze is unmistakeably fond. “What do you do, then? You failed to mention it.”

“That depends,” James says.

“On what?”

“Whether Rule One is still in effect.”

“Rule – oh!” Lily starts laughing again, happily buzzed enough not to be dreadfully embarrassed at the mention of her sad Post-It note, which is probably still under her bed somewhere; if she remembered correctly, she’d gotten distracted enough that morning not to have picked it up. “Yes, still in effect. More’s the pity.”

“Well, in that case,” James says. “I’m a…consultant.”

“Of what?”

“Someone’s out here asking the tough questions,” he mutters, sending her back into her fit of giggles. “Of…this bar. I consult for its – uh, taxes.”

“You’re an accountant?”

“…Yes,” James says, forging bravely onwards. “I’m an accountant, probably with two cats, and I’m a homebody.”

“You’re - _what_?”

“I mean,” he says, “I wasn’t out on the town two weeks ago. I have in fact been home every evening for the past year. This is my first trip into London’s nightlife in my whole life, probably. Fortunate for me I ran into you.”

“I have no idea where you’re going with this,” Lily says. “Should I be more or less drunk for it?”

“Less, ideally,” James says, and waits for her to get some water into her before he continues. “Because I’ve never seen you before in my life.” Lily stares at him, and he sighs. “You might go so far as call me distinct,” he says, “from whoever you met in the Mouse Trap last week.”

“Oh – _oh_ ,” Lily says, and starts laughing again. James makes a valiant effort to glare at her, and then gives up and covers his face with one hand.

“Fucking hell, you made that one tough for me,” he says into his palm. Lily’s sides are starting to register complaints against her for excessive cackling.

“I don’t think there was _any_ easy way you could have done that,” she gasps, and laughs even harder at the edges of his pained expression. “Fine, fine – what’s your name, accountant with two cats who’s never been out before.”

“Uh,” James says. “Jim.”

“Wow!”

“Shut up, I didn’t expect you to quiz me.”

“On your _name_?”

“I didn’t think this through,” James says, pointing a finger at her. Lily does not want to notice that’s it’s an attractive finger but her brain does so, anyway. “And frankly I think that’s a point in my favour, because it would’ve been a bit creepy if I had. Next time I’ll be prepared.”

“Next time,” Lily echoes, and he looks a little abashed.

“Jim’s confident.”

“No, I think that’s James,” Lily says. Slides him a sideways look. “Not that he doesn’t have good reason to be.”

“Oh, good.”

“So is Jim ever going to make a move?”

“Jim’s never been out in his life,” James says seriously. “You’re on your own with him.”

“Oh my – shut _up_ ,” Lily says, and leans forward before James can say anything else stupid.

Sirius kicks them out of the bar. No matter what he says, Lily’s pretty sure that it’s only because James is his best mate.

~*~

“So,” James had said the morning after, still awfully cheerfully, giving off every unfortunate impression that their previous encounter had not been a fluke and he is in fact a morning person, “next week, same place?”

Lily had thrown a pillow at him, at the time, and reminded him about the Post-It note; but here she is anyway, next week, same place. Sirius raises his eyebrows at her, and she ignores him. He makes her a dirty vodka martini almost before she’s even sat down, and she stares forlornly at it.

“Is this why you asked me my least favourite drink last week?”

“You desecrate my bar, I desecrate your tastebuds,” Sirius says remorselessly. Lily wrinkles her nose at him, but takes the punishment in stride.

“Can I buy that for you?” a familiar voice says, and Lily spins her stool around with enough force that James has to – or is able to, depending on one’s framing of events – reach out and steady her.

“Even better,” Lily says, “you can drink it for me.” James grins at her, and it’s only after they’ve performed the exchange that she looks away from his stupid face and realises he’s wearing a suit – a full suit-and-tie getup. The tie has tiny cats on it. His sleeves are rolled up. Lily wants to lick his forearms. She’s pretty sure she can feel her sanity eroding underneath the various surface processes that make up his general appearance. “This is different,” she says to hide it, poking the bunched-up fabric at his elbows.

“From what?”

“Oh, is this how you always dress?”

“Certainly,” James says, very dignified. “We Paisley-Huntingdons take our formalwear very seriously, you know.”

“Paisley Huntingdon who?”

“Elvendork Paisley-Huntingdon,” James says proudly, offering her a hand.

“Oh, wow,” Lily says. “Took you all week to think of that one, did it?”

“Nope,” James says cheerfully. “I’ve had a fondness for the name ever since before my mum told me I couldn’t have a cat.”

“You were going to name a cat Elvendork?”

“It’s unisex,” James says defensively. 

“It’s something, definitely,” Lily says. “Something I need to be more drunk to deal with.”

“Elvendork,” James announces dramatically, “is crushed.”

“ _Elvendork_ ,” Lily repeats, “is doing a terrible job of picking me up.”

“It’s not his fault,” James says. “He –”

“What, has he never been outside either?”

“No, he’s been outside,” James says, “but his name’s Elvendork. You’ve really got to temper your expectations of his social skills.”

Lily starts laughing again, helpless. “I thought you liked the name Elvendork!”

“I can like something and think it’s stupid,” James defends. “Besides, cats don’t need social skills – Elvendork probably would’ve grown up absolutely stifled by his name and I’d never have known the difference.”

“Poor Elvendork. Hypothetical cat and – uh, current human.”

“Oh, pity,” James says, “a great way to start our night together.”

“Our night together,” Lily repeats.

“Well, I should hope it’s not very well your night with Sirius.”

“Shouldn’t you? He is making my drinks.” Lily looks over at Sirius, who is demonstrating to an indulgently bemused customer how to shake a drink in time to a waltz.

“I could be making your drinks,” James says. “Elvendork probably drinks away his sorrows, he might even be good at it.” 

“What sorrows?”

“Well, there’s this fit bird who isn’t taking him seriously at all.”

“He’s not really taking himself seriously either, though, is he?”

“How can he? His name’s Elvendork, Lily.”

“You’re awfully one-note about this for someone who was shunning my pity a moment ago.”

James leans back. “You’re right. What Elvendork needs is some character development. Do you want to hear his life story?”

“No.”

“Elvendork,” James says, folding his hands in front of him only to start gesturing with them a moment later, “that is to say, I – was brought up by my mothers, Wilhelmina and Bathsheba –”

“I’m starting to see why you’re named Elvendork.”

James grins at her, quick and disarmingly bright, charming enough to make Lily resentfully glad that she’s sat down. “Are you? I wondered if I was being too subtle. Anyway, Wilhelmina tends towards neurotic, Bathsheba towards abrasiveness, and they’re both getting on a bit, but they both love me, Elvendork, so much that –”

“Not only am I not turned on right now, hearing about your elderly mothers,” Lily says, “I am actively turned off. The switch is being pushed past Off and through the Wall.”

James puts down his drink and turns to her. “Lily,” he says, very seriously, “I wrote out six pages of backstory for Elvendork.”

A smile tries desperately to crawl onto Lily’s face, and she fights it valiantly back down – for long enough, at least, to say, “James –”

“Elvendork.”

“ _This is not how you pick someone up_ ,” Lily hisses, and gives up on trying to control her laughter. She can’t even blame the drinks this time around.

“Look – look,” James says, and huffs out a laugh. “Lily, shush – look, character development’s important –”

“Nobody’s denying _that_ ,” Lily says, “but backstory’s there for you, not your audience. You use it to – to inform the performance.”

“I take umbrage at your suggesting anything about Elvendork is performative,” James sniffs. “He comes from my soul, Lily.”

“Maybe that’s where he should stay, too,” Lily suggests, and breaks out into further giggles at the insulted look on James’ face.

“Look, say what you want about Elvendork,” James says, “but you can’t deny he’s pretty distinct from Jim from last week.”

“Who?” Lily asks, hand on chest, forcing herself to take deep breaths.

“What d’you mean, _who_?”

“Well, I don’t think he left much of an impression.”

James narrows his eyes. “Oh, didn’t he.”

“Nope! I don’t know who you’re –”

“I’ll show _you_ impression –”

Mercifully, both of them have to stop talking when James pulls her across the gap between their bar stools and kisses her. It can’t be denied that he’s an awfully good kisser – good enough to put up with the _Elvendork_ shit, which was probably plenty, possibly too much. Lily resolves to think it through properly when she’s not being skilfully distracted by James’ mouth and wandering hands.

~*~

Lily does not think it through. The next week, Sirius narrows his eyes at her and lines two dirty vodka martinis up on the bar as soon as she’s through the door.

“Were you waiting to do that?” she grumbles.

“Yes,” he says. “I wouldn’t have to if you didn’t keep fornicating on my bar –”

Lily squeaks. “We _weren’t_ –”

“Drink up!” Sirius says, maniacally cheerful, and struts away. Lily scowls at his retreating back and drinks up in the tiniest sips she can manage.

She’s almost finished her first glass when James finally shows up – in suit and tie again, but distinctly neater about it this time, carrying a sheaf of papers, and moving very carefully. He sits down without making any noise at all.

“What’ve you got there?” Lily asks, poking at the paper. It flaps around gently, as though in a breeze, but James doesn’t relinquish his hold on them.

“Is this how you greet all your brand new acquaintances?”

“Sorry,” Lily says, lips twitching, already anticipating some new and novel twist. “Introduce yourself, why don’t you?”

“Bartleby, at your service.” James manages somehow to sketch out a bow from a seated position. Lily blinks at him, remembering the tattered copy of _Moby Dick_ on her bookshelf and wondering whether he’d remembered that.

“As in the scrivener?”

James grins even harder, winks at her. “Only when I prefer it. How’s this for making an impression?”

“Oh, awful,” Lily says, suppressing a smile of her own, “a lack of enthusiasm is definitely not what I’m looking for tonight. What a shame.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” James says. “I _very much_ prefer you.”

“Is that all Bartleby needed?” Lily asks, uncomfortably aware that the gremlins that run her brain are fully preparing to connect _Bartleby the Scrivener_ to horny times like a whole pack of overly loyal Pavlov’s dogs. “A good –” She makes an illustrative gesture, and James looks at her suggestively.

“I don’t know, want to test the theory?”

“Oh my, a pickup line,” Lily says. “Do you know I think that’s your first one yet?”

“Certainly it is,” James says dignifiedly. “Bartleby never flirts.”

“Bartleby _rebels_. Do you know something?” Lily asks, leaning close, pitching her voice low, “I might burn to be rebelled against, too.”

For a few moments James just blinks at her. Then, slightly and satisfyingly dazed, he says, “That’s really hot.”

Lily grins and applies herself to finding out what else her Bartleby prefers.

~*~

Sirius’s scowl doesn’t quite cancel out the grin that’s struggling to come out of his expression when he next sees her. He points her into the corner, the very edge, and she follows his finger doubtfully.

“Why here?”

“Trust me,” he says in dire tones, “this is the best place for you.”

“Is this the week you warm up to me?” Lily asks hopefully, with no martini in sight.

“Absolutely not,” Sirius says, and lifts a small _tray_ up from underneath the bar: three of the cursed drink, lined up neatly. No wonder he’d been in such a good mood, Lily reflects gloomily. He’s a sadist. “Listen,” Sirius says, “I’m in a generous mood. I’m going to be _very_ generous – there’s one martini here for each consecutive week you’ve required me to take out the bleach, but it’s not cumulative. Literally all you have to do is break the streak and you’ll be back down to one on your next offence, you take my meaning?” He glares. “One week of peace. One night where I don’t have to consider whether throwing water on you two is too debasing a task for me to perform. That’s all I want.”

“Too debasing for _you_ to perform?”

“As far as I’m concerned, a bucket of water isn’t debasing enough for two people as wanton as you and James. My self-respect is the only thing keeping you dry.” He stabs a finger in her direction. “You’d do well to remember that.”

“We really aren’t as bad as you’re making it out to be,” Lily mutters, hunkering down to sip at the stupid olive drinks that she’s pretty sure, at this point, were only invented to spite her.

James takes even longer to materialise this time: Lily’s finished her second martini and is bravely battling her way through the third before he shows up.

Well – “shows up”, as a term, implies more active agency than he has in the matter. Sirius drags him out of the back room, would be a more accurate portrayal of events as they happened. He’s leaning on a makeshift stretcher, swathed in bandages, and there’s a comically terrible rendering of a bomb on A4 paper taped to his stomach. Sirius leans the stretcher against the end of the bar and James in turn leans against it, utterly unselfconscious in the face of the many, many strange looks he’s getting.

“I’m at a loss,” Lily says. “Are you a very incompetent terrorist?”

James gives her an offended look. “Is that how you greet every stranger who crosses your path?”

“Sorry,” Lily says, “it just came out of me. But I don’t know if I want to introduce myself, you know,” she can’t resist adding. “Being that you might be a particularly incompetent terrorist.”

“I’m no such thing,” James says severely – and, she thinks, in an accent slightly more florid than usual. Lily narrows her eyes; she’d bet that this is another literary figure, but she hasn’t the faintest idea of which. “I am but a victim of circumstance and imagination. A tragic figure, if you will.”

“A tragic figure? I don’t know, dude,” Lily says. She’s going to come out of this with an absolutely impeccable poker face, with the amount of fighting she’s doing. “I’m not really in the mood for tragedy.”

“I know not this dude whereof you speak,” James says, which maybe narrows it down to something pre-1900. “And you still haven’t introduced yourself.”

“Hi, I’m Lily. You?”

“A very lacklustre introduction,” James says.

“Better than _none_ ,” Lily says with a pointed look. James makes a flowing gesture with his hand.

“I,” he says dramatically, “am Bunbury.”

Lily’s going to sink through the _floor_. “At –” She struggles to stay composed, pokes at the paper taped to his stomach. The cartoon bomb drawing crinkles up at her. “– at the point of explosion, I assume?”

“Quite,” James says gravely. “You see the seriousness of the situation.”

“ _Quite_ ,” Lily chokes out. She has to take a few deep breaths to maintain her composure. “You’ve really – you’ve really> embraced this minor literary character thing, haven’t you?”

“Bunbury is of the utmost importance!” James exclaims.

“Look, alright, I’m not contesting that, I’m just – alright.” Lily cuts herself off, because to question further would be to examine the whole foundation of this bizarre arrangement, and she’s not ready for that. “I just wonder how appealing a figure _Bunbury_ can really be, in this day and age.”

“You underestimate me,” James says, “but even worse, you wound me. Do we not all want to fuck off, occasionally, to the countryside? Come Bunbury with me, Lily.”

Embarrassingly – Lily is never going to admit it to anyone – this line works, at least well enough that by the end of the night James is once again in her flat, and in other, more intimate places as well.

“Looking for inspiration?” she asks blurrily, when she wakes up to see him scrutinising her bookshelves again. James shrugs.

“Wondering how well a French accent and an obsessive desire to see justice done would go over, actually.”

“…There are sexier characters than Javert,” Lily says. “Even just in Les Mis.”

“Ah, but the jokes I could make about bringing you to justice for your crimes,” James says wistfully. 

“Besides, I thought you had that B-theme going,” Lily says, recognising even in her hazy post-sleep state that alliteration is the most likely thing to appeal to James’ sensibilities at the moment, or indeed at any moment. “Bartleby, Bunbury –”

“Baron Blakeney?” James asks, pulling the book in question from its place on the shelf. “I seek you here, I seek you there – I seek a Lily everywhere –”

“You ought to –”

“Go to heaven? Go to hell?” James asks theatrically, not quite managing to stay on top of the syllabic count.

“No,” Lily says, picking her phone up and unlocking it, “give me your number.”

James looks a little taken aback by the proposition, but he recovers quickly enough that Lily wonders whether she’d imagined it. “I can do that,” he says.

“And you should tell me who you plan to be.”

“Rather takes the surprise out of it, doesn’t it?”

“Well, yes,” Lily says, “but I feel cheated of the opportunity to have been Lady Augusta. I do an excellent warbling _handbaaag_ when I’m more awake, if I do say so myself.”

James looks up, grinning an unholy grin. “You’d have subjected poor Bunbury to Lady Augusta?”

“Certainly,” Lily says. “If anyone could prevent the untimely explosion of Bunbury it would be her, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, you’re undoubtedly right,” James says. “Nobody could dare to flout good manners so badly in front of Lady Augusta, not even to explode.” He hands her phone back to her with a new contact in it; she texts a thumbs up and James’ phone on the bedside table buzzes. “Now that’s settled,” he says, “do you want some breakfast?”

~*~

The thing is – well.

The thing is, James’ presence is, perhaps, slightly intoxicating, and probably eats away at any sense of good judgement Lily has left in her. It had seemed like a fine idea, a good idea, even, while he was babbling on about Percy Blakeney and mangling his rhymes, to ask for his number. It’d seemed very reasonable, something to let them keep in touch and coordinate plans for this stupid – whatever it is they’re doing.

But that’s the whole problem, in the end, isn’t it? She doesn’t have the faintest idea what they’re doing.

Almost as soon as James is out the door Lily finds herself staring at her phone like it’s betrayed her, but her phone is in fact nothing more than a plastic brick and does not have the sentience required to perform any acts of betrayal. Lily was the one who’d said, as brazenly as anything, that James ought to put his number in her phone. And then he had, which is what she’d wanted, and perhaps it’s still what she wants, but things seem a lot less clear in his absence. 

Mostly Lily remembers the humiliating ordeal of developing feelings for her last friend with benefits, and the one before that, and the one before _that_ , and there were only so many times – three, three is the so many times and it is in fact _so many times_ – that she could fail so completely and utterly to be casual about a casual arrangement before she had to cut herself off from the things altogether.

And James is. James. And now she has his number. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but it very much is. The infuriating sans serif font shining up at her from her phone screen is tangible proof that whatever she is doing here is not quite so casual, after all. That it has prompted desires for _communication_ and _collaboration_ with someone who was meant to be a one night stand and nothing more.

The signs are dire. Even more dire: Lily doesn’t want to call it off. She ought to; some small part of her with its faculties yet intact knew perfectly well that she was well past the starting point of the path to emotional attachment. She was at the point, apparently, where she was willing to quibble with herself rather than call things off.

Her phone buzzes. Of course it’s James; he says, _for future reference, it’s Blakeney until stated otherwise_. He’s saved his number in her phone under the eggplant emoji. 

Lily looks around to check whether she has anything resembling 16th century dress. Then she realises what she’s doing and puts her head in her hands.

~*~

Sirius raises his eyebrows when Lily comes into The Banana Grave a few days early, and makes for the sprits immediately. She’s bracing herself for four vodka martinis as she sits, but he doesn’t present her with even one. Instead he slides over a new drink, something bright purple in a round glass.

“Is this the week you warm up to me?” Lily asks doubtfully.

“No,” Sirius says, “this is the week where I take more care of your bank account than you do. Instead of four martinis, you get –” He gestures at the purple drink.

“And what’s –” Lily copies his gesture.

“New drink,” Sirius says, “I’ll give it a name if it’s good. You get to be the guinea pig.”

“How lucky for me,” Lily says dryly. The drink is uniquely, acidly awful. She’s pretty sure Sirius engineered it that way.

“So?”

“Oh, it’s great,” she tells him brightly, lying through her teeth and the mortuary remains of her tastebuds. Sirius smirks, and Lily forces herself not to grimace as she downs the rest of the glass demonstratively. “Definitely put it on the menu. Make it the house special, even.”

“I _might just_ ,” Sirius threatens, and finally seems to relent. “So what are you doing here? It’s not Friday.”

“Thank you, I know.”

“James’ll be sad he missed you.”

“Will he?” Lily asks, feeling herself perk up against her will. Sirius gives her a narrow-eyed look that could mean absolutely anything. Not that Lily is trying to read meaning into it, of course. “I mean –” 

“Oh, no,” Sirius says at once, waving his hands. “I’m no carrier pigeon. You tell him yourself that you missed him too.”

“Would he want to hear it?” Lily asks. Sirius only glares flatly at her, which is unhelpful.

“Nice as he is, I’m not here to spend all my time talking about James.”

“No, you’re right, that’s fair,” Lily says morosely. “How are you, Sirius.”

“Nervous, thanks for asking,” Sirius says. “Constantly nervous.”

And then not only does he not elaborate, he walks away. Lily has to wait for him to do the rounds before she can ask, “Why?”

Sirius looks grimly both ways, and then leans close and says, “Health inspector.”

“Hmm,” Lily says, reconsidering that drink.

“Not in terms of health inspecting, you doubting Thomas. I think he might have been sent by my family.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh no is right. He keeps asking if I want coffee. I work in a bar, he thinks I want coffee?”

“Maybe he’s trying to ask you on a date,” Lily says, very aware that there’s some kind of irony in her being the one to make that statement. Sirius feels the same, if the flat look he gives her is any indication.

“James said the same thing,” he says, and unfairly that seems to be his last word on the subject even though it sparks about a thousand questions in Lily. Should she be offering James coffee? Should she change their meeting place to a coffee shop? Should she be reading into the fact that he hadn’t made coffee along with their breakfasts that morning? On some level she recognises that these questions are ridiculous, so she does not ask them. Sirius sweeps away again; Lily pays and leaves.

~*~

James’ Blakeney is – like his Bartleby and Bunbury – surprisingly absorbing, once Lily has stopped laughing about it. Her only problem with it is that he keeps saying, “Sink me!” which is a phrase that does not appear once in the original text. Lily would know, seeing that she’d not-quite-coincidentally embarked on a reread this week.

When she remembers to quiz him about it – by which time it is already, somehow, the morning after – James goes from disbelieving to outraged in what has to be a record amount of time, and insists on being the one to cook breakfast so she can prop her laptop on her knees and watch the 1934 version of The Scarlet Pimpernel, which had apparently been the whole foundation for his interpretation of the character.

“You can’t appreciate my performance without watching at least a little Leslie Howard,” he insists, and turns out to be correct.

“You’re right,” Lily admits, when he comes in again with a plate in each hand. “He does say ‘sink me!’ a lot.”

James does the washing up so that Lily can keep watching, and – she’s not entirely sure how it happens, because neither of them say a word, but he makes a move to go and she makes a move to invite him back onto the bed and somehow it seems that the latter wins out. They finish watching the film together, and then it is revealed that he hasn’t read the book in years and it seems only fair that he be forced to reread the book if she’d been made to watch the film. With the book under one arm he leaves as he always does, and Lily has to contend with the fact that she’s just spent ninety minutes of her Saturday morning watching a film with someone who is at best a friend with benefits and at worst no more than a one night stand.

It hadn’t _felt_ like a one night stand. Lily’s pretty sure it hadn’t felt like a friends with benefits encounter, either. She might be bad at those, but she thinks she can at least identify them, still.

Lacking any further insight into the issue, she takes it up with Sirius.

“Does James routinely, you know, stick around the next morning?” she asks him, holding her glass very tightly. Sirius casts his eyes to the ceiling.

“I’m not a relationship counsellor, either.”

“I’m not asking for relationship counselling,” Lily says, in a tone which would probably be more impressive if she had managed to keep it steady. “That implies that there’s a relationship to be counselled.”

“Isn’t there?”

I’m just asking,” Lily continues doggedly, “whether he’s in the habit of, of cooking breakfast and watching films with his partners before he leaves. And, uh, taking their books.”

“No,” Sirius says. “I’m pretty sure that’s just you. And if you say one more word about James,” he continues threateningly, when Lily opens her mouth, “I’m cutting you off and kicking you out.”

Lily sighs. “Yeah, all right. How’s your health inspector?”

“We’re going for tea on Friday,” Sirius says severely somehow managing to make this statement proud and somewhat disparaging.

“Congratulations,” Lily says, and means it. Sirius sniffs, but she’s pretty sure he’s excited somewhere underneath it.

~*~

Lily makes it through exactly one more week without issue, which is all told a shamefully short time. The next time that she meets James he takes her to his place, which is nice in the dark and even nicer in the morning sun, which seems unfair. And James is, for once, asleep when Lily wakes up, so she tiptoes into the kitchen and takes a few deep breaths which do nothing to help the knots in her stomach.

And then James appears, filling up the doorway, and the knots are pulled even tighter. They begin to multiply.

“I thought I’d start breakfast,” Lily says weakly, spinning away.

“It’s my kitchen,” James says. “You can put your feet up.”

“My feet have been up,” she says contemplatively, looking at his shoulders. He looks at her for a second, and then he _blushes_ , which is probably the worst thing that anyone could do to Lily in her emotionally compromised state. She does sit down then, but only because she’s not sure she can keep standing up.

She does maintain that she would have been fine like this, eventually, and perhaps even been able to keep her mouth shut, except he starts talking about getting her to watch His Girl Friday, which Lily is still fairly certain is not one night stand behaviour, and this is, embarrassingly, enough that the words just spill right out of her: “Is this dating behaviour?”

“What?” James says, turning around so fast that he drops the bottle of orange juice he’s holding. It rolls across the floor and pokes coldly against Lily’s toes, which is coincidentally where her heart has decided to take shelter after what she’d said.

“What?” she asks, but there’s no hiding from it. James’ eyes narrow.

“Did Sirius say something to you?”

“Is there something to say?” This time James is the one to stay tight-lipped. Lily squares her shoulders, newly courageous. “Well, it doesn’t seem like one night stand behaviour. Breakfast. Making me watch films.” Dressing up in literary-themed disguises to contravene her rule about distinct one night stands. She doesn’t say that one, because it sounds patently ridiculous even in the relative privacy of her head.

“I’m not making you do anything,” James says. “I’m suggesting.”

Lily has no idea how to respond to that. She could say _do you suggest to everyone_ , but she’s not sure she wants to hear the answer. James is tense as he turns to the pan, and for a moment the sound of sizzling fills the small room.

Then it fades, and the round smell of frying eggs begins to expand, and just as Lily realises miserably that he knows how she likes her eggs James says, “Do you want it to be?” She’s silent, and he turns to look at her. “You’re the one with the rule.” It ought to be accusatory, probably, but it’s not. He’s very nice about it.

“I know,” Lily mumbles eventually. James keeps watching her with quiet open eyes, and Lily can feel that gaze teasing secrets out of her. The pan pops and he turns back to it and somehow it only makes her want to speak more. “I made it because I tried a friends with benefits thing,” she says. “Three times. And was so bad at staying casual. I mean – really, apocalyptically bad.” 

“That makes sense,” James says to the eggs.

“So,” Lily says, something very obstructive in her throat, and if her heart is in her toes then it’s probably her lungs clogging up her oesophagus and she’s just very anatomically jumbled up, right now, “pretty much exactly what happened here.”

The way he relaxes, the way he looks at her then – it makes it all worth it, that rising hopeful brightness. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Lily breathes, horrendously relieved, tempted to melt into a puddle on the floor. He grins, briefly abandoning the pan to step closer to her, the look in his eyes a heartily convincing argument against the abandonment of corporeality.

“D’you want to be awful at containing our emotions together?”

Lily starts laughing, too delighted not to reach for him. “Yes,” she says, “yes, good, let’s do that, please.”

“Please,” James echoes, grinning, and kisses her – or maybe she kisses him, or they kiss each other, but the point is, ultimately, that the eggs are burnt, the frying pan has to be rescued from burning where it stands, and breakfast has to wait a while longer.

**Author's Note:**

> is this just an extended treatise on my ideal world wherein people routinely force old media into each other? PERHAPS. shoutout to the guy unfortunate enough to be roomed with me in a hostel last year who had to go through the real life version of this (i did make him watch His Girl Friday). be the change you want to see in the world !!


End file.
